A
Film by
Norman Weinbergon behalf of the
Polish Jewish Cemeteries Restoration Project

.

One man's search to discover his
roots leads to an extraordinary effort to honor the memory of a lost
people and culture in Poland. Norman Weinberg and Jewish descendants
of the pre-war shtetl known as Ozarow, unite to restore the Jewish
cemetery that had been desecrated by the Nazis and neglected for over
six decades.

Before the war, Jews far outnumbered
Poles in Ozarow; now there were none. Almost all had been sent to
Treblinka. Others, who were rounded up after the deportation, were
forced to dig their own grave and shot. Determined to do what he could
to honor and remember the dead and those murdered in the Holocaust,
Weinberg reached out for help from the town and from other Ozarow
descendants worldwide using the miracle of the Internet. Their
enthusiastic response was immediate. In an extraordinary series of
events, five months from the start of the project, the cemetery was
restored.

At the dedication ceremony, he and
his wife Hannah and other Jewish Ozarowers were greeted by over five
hundred townspeople, the mayor and the priest, as well as Polish and
foreign dignitaries. A moving ceremony followed at the mass grave
where the priest and the Ozarower Rebbe, Rabbi Tanchum Becker, a
descendant of the famous rabbis of Ozarow, led prayers.

Ozarow has since become a model for
Jewish cemetery restoration in Poland, and Weinberg and a team of
Poland Jewish Cemeteries Restoration Project coordinators have begun
the ambitious task of restoring the remaining twelve hundred
devastated cemeteries of Poland.

This half-hour documentary film is
available in VHS (NTSC or PAL) and DVD formats. Copies may be
purchased for $55 US (which includes shipping and handling in the US
and Canada only). Make checks or money orders payable to PJCRP, Inc.
Copies are available at no charge to Jewish organizations, including
Holocaust museums, schools, film festivals, Jewish centers and
synagogues upon written request on the organization's letterhead.

"Jewish cemetery restoration
in Poland is about remembering and honoring the dead, and the
millions slaughtered in the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands
murdered in cemeteries and in nearby forests and buried in mass
graves. Jewish cemetery restoration is among the greatest mitzvot
one can do, since the dead cannot thank us. It is also about life
and the living, about tikkun olam…repairing the world, reclaiming
and reconnecting to our Jewish heritage, educating youth, tolerance
and reconciliation."